1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to the field of management systems and methods. More particularly it relates to systems and methods for assessing and tracking operational and functional performance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Effective management of an organization includes proper assessment and tracking of the operational and functional performance of various entities at various levels within the organization, including, for example, the various positions within the organization (e.g., president, vice president, manager, supervisor, laborer, etc.) at various locations, and the various corporate units, and/or plants at different levels of the organization (e.g., company, division, region, department, etc). Traditionally, organizations have relied on annual or bi-annual reviews to track and assess performance of the various entities or positions at different levels of the organization. Such reviews, however, often fail to provide high-level management with a clear view of the success or failure of the organization, and thus the various positions, in achieving critical business objectives. For example, such systems may not provide for any objective or timely assessment of the performance of the various positions at the various levels of the organization.
Moreover, in a large enterprise performance assessment and tracking data may be processed using different legacy applications and systems, which can prevent high-level managers or executives of the enterprise from developing a uniform enterprise wide performance assessment and tracking system. Indeed, because the disparate legacy systems and databases within the enterprise may not share data or processes with each other, the enterprise leadership may be forced to evaluate similarly positioned executives or managers at different business units using different evaluation criteria. Further, performance assessment and tracking systems typically suffer from a widely varying and subjective grading system. Different reviewers can have significantly different ideas of what a “good” employee or metric is as compared to a “very good” employee or metric. These can result in a non-uniform or unfair compensation system, which may, for example, overcompensate some executives while under-compensating others. Although one might manually combine information from these disparate systems into an enterprise wide system with a standard measurement system, such manual operations are cumbersome, error prone, and, for very large enterprises, virtually impossible.
Traditional operational and performance tracking systems can not provided easy access to enterprise wide performance and tracking data. For example, the enterprise leadership may not be able to preview and validate business unit or executive performance data before an evaluation is given. Further, the performance of executives at various positions and levels within the organization may not be measured by the same yardstick. Specifically, for example, higher corporate officers may need to be evaluated based on the performance of the entire corporate entity, while lower level executives may need to be evaluated based on individual/unit indicators.
Thus, current systems and methods for assessing and tracking operational and functional performance are inadequate, error prone or impossible for effective management of an enterprise. Accordingly, there is a need for effective systems and methods for assessing and tracking operational and functional performance.